PADI vs NAUI

[DCBC]

Not at all. You keep bashing one agency all the time. Sometimes you do it passively and other times aggressively. It's truly a passive/aggressive thing for you. It's funny that you are denying that.

If you are referring to the expression of my informed opinion: unlike you I was a PADI Instructor for 13 years, owned a PADI Shop, had numerous discussions with its co-founder. as well as other interactions about their training program and have been an expert witness in Court regarding what is and is not a reasonable Standard of Care. So yes, I have an opinion. Have I expressed it? Yes, and will continue too. Is this opinion different from others? Yes, opinions tend to be like that. Is my opinion based upon bad blood? No; they are based on actual experience. Are they based upon recent interaction with PADI? No. PADI may be a completely different beast than they were several years ago. I do however remain unconvinced.

I would find it interesting in what you base many of your opinions on. Many times they don't seem to be based on anything and are often just critical.

Sure you have. You are just unwilling to admit you were wrong. In no way are all actions and activities monitored by any agency. ...You should write more clearly and admit when you're wrong or have misstated something.

In any conversation, there is an expectation in my mind that the reader will use common sense. It would appear that from your perspective, you are right. No Agency monitors everything an Instructor does. The degree of supervision is limited. The Agency doesn't make note of everything done by the Instructor; how many times he takes a bathroom break, or how many jokes he tells. They do however monitor the Instructor. These are usually passive means, but in case of a complaint they take a more active approach. They tend to attempt to fulfill their legal obligation. No Instructor or Agency is perfect; but they attempt to do their job in a reasonable way.

If you want "old school" for whatever reason, there are a number of instructors out there who simply refuse to evolve with the rest of us and like training to be arduous if not painful. If you want a fun and relevant class then there are many instructors who have not only evolved with the industry but are innovators in their own right. They put the fun back into the fundamentals of diving.

Again you are uninformed. You state:
"old school" = less fun and the "Instructors refuse to evolve like the rest of us."

This supposes that you are an "evolved Instructor" and I'm not (what a load of crap). Moreover, you make this statement without any knowledge of my Instructional abilities and the rate of student satisfaction relating to my program. It would seem that your evolved standard of Instruction would condemn GUE and like organizations to be less fun as well. There program is no doubt closer in-line with mine than yours ever will be.

You also state what is relevant to the Student. Actually, you have no idea of the conditions in-which I train in. Quite frankly, you are not in a position to make such a statement, but make it anyway (no surprise here)...

 

[ski&dive]

I am PADI certified and would not recommend PADI unless you know the instructor has significant diving experience and wants to teach because of love of the sport. The same goes for Naui or SSI or anyone else. I took a PADI course through a dive club in 1984. It was fun and games in the pool every Thursday night for about 10 weeks. PADI was just getting started and watched 16mm sound movies after the pool session and took the tests. It was FREE and by invite only. I didn't do my open water dives so I never got certified. I did a resort course in 1988 at Club Med and did 4 OW dives. I needed a C-Card so I took and paid for another PADI course. It was not nearly as comprehensive as my original class. I did my 4 OW dives in Cozumel and 4 more days of diving. Today they would have required specialties in Boat Diving, Drift diving, Deep Diving, multilevel diving, night diving (yes, I did 2 night dives immediately after being certified) and probably several others. Also the day after I was certified, I was my instructor's buddy (Instructors needed buddies then) for Advanced OW dives for my classmates who were also getting their advanced certification the same week the got their advanced. There is no way these students should have been called advanced divers but it was OK with PADI.

Since then I have gotten my advanced cert. A resort we went to offered the course for free plus the fee they had to send to PADI. One of my classmates could not swim. Since this is a requirement for basic (not for advanced) he also got his advanced. Asked how he got his basic, he said his instructor went out for a cigarette and when he came back, the student said he did the swim test. Another strike against PADI.

I was also diving with PADI IDC resorts while they were training instructors. One was doing a very good job. The other was on the boat with us every day so he could get the minimum number of dives required to be an instructor. I wouldn't want that person to be my dive buddy and certainly not my instructor. I've also talked to instructors who have said they did not want to certify some students but the dive shop they worked for basically said "they paid their money, sign their card"

All of the agencies and dive shops have a problem. They want to make diving sound easy and everyone can do it but at the same time the need to justify the high cost of the class.

In over 2000 dives I have seen many certified divers that should not be in the water. Since PADI certified most divers until recently (and maybe still), most were PADI certified. And there is no way to pull a person's C-Card after he gets it.

 

[DCBC]

...There is no way these students should have been called advanced divers but it was OK with PADI.... ...I wouldn't want that person to be my dive buddy and certainly not my instructor. I've also talked to instructors who have said they did not want to certify some students but the dive shop they worked for basically said "they paid their money, sign their card." All of the agencies and dive shops have a problem. They want to make diving sound easy and everyone can do it but at the same time the need to justify the high cost of the class. ...In over 2000 dives I have seen many certified divers that should not be in the water. Since PADI certified most divers until recently (and maybe still), most were PADI certified.

Unfortunately, there are a number of Instructors in every Agency that deliver as little as possible to their students. Instructor Standards have dropped, along with all other areas of certification. Although PADI has been synonymous with low requirements, they are not alone. Other Agencies have found themselves in a position of either lowering their standards to compete, or going out of business. To the best of my knowledge, every certification Agency (that has any substantial history in the field of diving instruction) has lowered it's Standards. The exception to this is LA County which has never had any aspirations to be a national or international diver training agency (one of the reasons for the creation of NAUI). I suspect that this trend will continue (NAUI recently dropped their requirements again).

The change (spearheaded by PADI) that diver training be focused on the Dive Shop (away from being Instructor/Club centric) resulted in the 'business of diver certification' (there are pros and cons to this). In many cases, instruction became prepackaged and focused on profit rather than educational benefit to the Diver. Although there are still conscientious Instructors in all Agencies that do their best to deliver good training, many others find themselves working for a Dive Shop and at times find themselves at odds with the profit model.

 

[kaerius]

You might also note that the buddy almost killed himself in the process of trying. He simply didn't know how.

He forgot how in a stressful situation, I doubt his instructors didn't teach him to ditch weights for bouyancy. It is a (PADI) standard. And is normally hammered in. In any diveshop I've been a student at or worked in, it's part of the buddy check procedure before jumping into the water. "Check for right hand release, or how your buddy's integrated weight system works so you can dump their weights in an emergency". It's the R in BWRAF. But no the standards don't have a "dump your buddy's weights" training excercise, perhaps it should. It is however repeated in both textbook, quizes and buddy check.

---------- Post added May 5th, 2013 at 07:19 AM ----------

Since then I have gotten my advanced cert. A resort we went to offered the course for free plus the fee they had to send to PADI. One of my classmates could not swim. Since this is a requirement for basic (not for advanced) he also got his advanced. Asked how he got his basic, he said his instructor went out for a cigarette and when he came back, the student said he did the swim test. Another strike against PADI.

No, a strike against that instructor. He violated standards, and would be in trouble if reported to PADI.

 

[TSandM]

It seems as though there is a lot of confusion about the role of agency, shop and instructor in some of the posts here.

The agency writes standards and distributes them. The agency may create teaching materials and make them available to students and instructors. The agency investigates complaints and decides on disciplinary actions against instructors or shops, if they are needed. The agency doesn't teach classes or "monitor" instructors, outside of student surveys and responses to complaints. I do believe that the agency becomes MORE responsible for the quality of its agents as those agents rise in the food chain, but the agency is not responsible, for example, for the quality of an instructor -- the instructor trainer and instructor examiner are. Unless there is a pervasive culture of mediocrity (and I don't deny that it might exist) or something in the written standards that specifically permits poor performance, the agency is not really responsible for a bad instructor.

The shop may place restrictions or requirements on the instructors which have nothing to do with the agency. Restrictions on pool time, on gear type and availability, or dive sites have nothing to do with standards, and everything to do with controlling a shop's costs. Very dedicated and good instructors can be forced into trying to operate within a class structure of which they don't approve, and although it is easy to say that someone with ethics should simply go independent or go elsewhere, if you want to do much teaching that can be difficult, or in some places even impossible.

The instructor himself can be motivated and thorough, or burned out and going through the most minimal motions. I've had both kinds. Which is where the argument ends, really. Some folks believe that the agency should write standards that absolutely mandate a certain level of quality in instructors. GUE, for example, has very clearly written standards, which are available to students and instructors, that spell out each skill that has to be done, and the evaluation criteria for each skill, and the point system to be awarded by the instructor. In addition, instructors are required to be reevaluated by the agency at regular intervals to minimize paradigm shift. It's a good system, which maximizes consistency across the instructor cadre, but it does not ensure that every GUE instructor is equivalent to all the others. Some are better teachers, some are more patient, some are more eloquent, some have better insight into how to solve problems. And the system GUE uses (which includes not issuing certification cards to students UNTIL the class evaluation is submitted) is only possible because the worldwide instructor corps is less than 100 people. There is no way an agency like PADI (or NAUI, either!) could do this.

Because we live in the real world, the matters that are most likely to impact the virgin open water student are more likely to be related to the individual instructor's competence and motivation, and the shop's constraints, than the influence of the particular agency -- at least as long as you remain within the umbrella of the "mainstream" certification agencies.

 

[DCBC]

...The shop may place restrictions or requirements on the instructors which have nothing to do with the agency. Restrictions on pool time, on gear type and availability, or dive sites have nothing to do with standards, and everything to do with controlling a shop's costs. Very dedicated and good instructors can be forced into trying to operate within a class structure of which they don't approve, and although it is easy to say that someone with ethics should simply go independent or go elsewhere, if you want to do much teaching that can be difficult, or in some places even impossible. ...Because we live in the real world, the matters that are most likely to impact the virgin open water student are more likely to be related to the individual instructor's competence and motivation, and the shop's constraints, than the influence of the particular agency -- at least as long as you remain within the umbrella of the "mainstream" certification agencies.

Each Instructor has the moral, ethical and legal requirement to reasonably insure that every Diver they certify possesses the skill, knowledge and health/fitness to dive safely unsupervised with a Buddy (contingent on the Agency) and within the environmental envelope for the level certified (in a similar or better diving environment in-which they have been trained), which is also contingent on the Agency. The choice to certify is the Instructor's and s/he alone bears this responsibility.

The strict focus on profit by some shops affects diver safety in a negative way. Many Shops tend to affiliate with Agencies that have the lowest Standards for this purpose. I believe this to be the scourge of the diver training Industry. I don't deny a Shop's influence on its Instructors, as far as "the real world" is concerned, but believe this isn't always in the best interests of the Student or the diving industry.

The "real world" is full of avarice and deceit. Each of us have a choice to participate in these actions or refrain from doing so. That is the real world; there are no excuses...

 

[boulderjohn]

Let's talk about something other than scuba instruction for a while.

Just about every college and university has departments of education that produce teachers. The instructional requirements to get the required education are intense. In addition to a large number of required courses, students must do supervised student teaching, internships, and other such requirements. These training requirements are at least 10,000 times more complex and extensive than scuba instructor training.

Then the student must be certified. Every state has rigorous certification requirements so that they can be sure teachers are qualified. These usually include exams and other such requirements. Once certified, the teachers much continue to fulfill additional training requirements in order to have their certifications renewed every 5 years or so. Again, this requirement is thousands of times more rigorous than scuba instructor final certification.

Once hired, the teacher must be observed and evaluated regularly by an administrative staff to ensure that they are doing a satisfactory job. Minor deficiencies are noted, and suggestions for improvement are made. Major deficiencies must be corrected to avoid termination. Although some shops do something like this, scuba can't possibly match this process.

And yet we have a tremendous disparity in the quality of teaching. We have grossly incompetent teachers in most of the schools in North America.

When there are such grossly incompetent teachers, do you ever hear anyone blame the university that provided the initial training? Is the state that oversees the certification process blamed? Do we jump all over the building administrators who are allowing this blatant incompetence to occur beneath their very noses? No! We blame the teacher.

If bad teaching cannot be prevented using such an elaborate and extremely expensive process, how can a scuba agency hope to do any better?

 

[chrpai]

If bad teaching cannot be prevented using such an elaborate and extremely expensive process, how can a scuba agency hope to do any better?

It just goes to prove that in everything there are those who can and those who...

Personally I skipped the whole higher education racket.

 

[SeaCobra]

And yet we have a tremendous disparity in the quality of teaching. We have grossly incompetent teachers in most of the schools in North America.

When there are such grossly incompetent teachers, do you ever hear anyone blame the university that provided the initial training? Is the state that oversees the certification process blamed? Do we jump all over the building administrators who are allowing this blatant incompetence to occur beneath their very noses? No! We blame the teacher.

If bad teaching cannot be prevented using such an elaborate and extremely expensive process, how can a scuba agency hope to do any better?

Largely because the scuba industry is infinitely smaller and much more intimate. And by the way - the poor instructor should also be held accountable.

 

[DCBC]

If bad teaching cannot be prevented using such an elaborate and extremely expensive process, how can a scuba agency hope to do any better?

Bad teaching can never be prevented. No Instructor or Agency is perfect. A SCUBA Agency can however establish and maintain reasonable standards for Diver and Instructor certification. Each Agency will protect themselves from liability as they deem appropriate. In-turn, each Instructor can choose to fulfill their Standard of Care that's required of them (or not). They can act in a professional and competent manner (or not). Should an accident occur, the Agency and/or Instructor may have to answer for their actions/non-actions in a court of law.

Some Dive Shops will continue to put pressure on Instructors to take short cuts. Similarly, there will continue to be educational facilities that will issue meaningless degrees and certifications without ensuring the competence of the student. This is often done in consideration of increasing profit without delivering value. Not all learning facilities, Agencies, or Instructors are created equally.